The present invention relates in general to telephonic conference calling, and, more specifically, to a local conference bridge in a premise-based network for extending the number of participants in a conference call.
Telephone conference calls are a widely available service for connecting three or more different telephone terminals for the mutual exchange of voice and/or video communication signals. In a typical arrangement using the public telephone system, each of the separate conference call participants are connected to a conference bridge. The cost and complexity of maintaining a conference bridge is proportional to the particular number of ports provided in the bridge allowing participants to connect to a particular conference call. Thus, there are practical limits to the number participants to any particular conference call under control of a single conference bridge.
In addition to requiring separate ports for each participant, prior art conference calling utilizes individual dedicated circuits between the terminal of each conference call participant and the conference bridge. When multiple participants of a conference call are located in close proximity (e.g., separate telephone terminals within a building served by a private branch exchange or terminals served by the same telephone company central office), then the multiple individual circuits to the conference bridge may result in an inefficient use of the telephone switching circuits and communication channels.
Privately owned enterprise systems such as a private branch exchange (PBX) or a wireless local area network (WLAN) are becoming widely used because of their reduced cost and increased availability of various calling features. These systems are especially useful in the context of enterprise communication systems (e.g., telephony systems for business or governmental organizations) involving large numbers of coworkers, associates, and colleagues wherein many conference calls may be conducted involving participants and different endpoints or terminals within the enterprise system. This increases the likelihood of inefficient utilization of conference bridge and telephone circuit resources when establishing conference calls.